Ch. 5: The Other Green Lady
Back to Arheled Travel wasn’t available for what she sarcastically called “Ronnie’s grilling trip” until Friday, the 23rd, which the calendar marked as both the equinox and the first day of autumn. After school. That way she’d have all weekend to do her homework. She looked forward with some anticipation to getting home, therefore, and was the first one off the bus. Ben got down behind her. The bus doors shut and it sighed and clanked into action. “Um, hey, sorry about the other day.” said Ben. “It’s all right. It’s kind of flattering to get passed at, but I’m just not used to having it happen.” she giggled. “Thanks.” Suddenly his eyes narrowed. “Who the f— is that?” Looking down the road toward Colebrook Travel made out the old dark-blue pickup of Ronnie Wendy. “Oh, that looks like Ronnie.” she said. “Sorry, my friend, Ronnie Wend—is something wrong?” “Oh—um—no, but I think I’d better go, huh? Hey, babe, it was nice seeing you, huh? See you Monday!” and he headed off at a fast walk. Ronnie pulled up. “Looks like I timed it perfect.” he drawled. “Who’s that, your busmate?” “He’s certainly not my mate! But yes, he shares my stop.” Ronnie’s eyes gave a brief gleam of red. “Don’t trust him.” he said flatly. “This far off, I can’t tell—he’s hiding pretty good—but I’m almost certain I see dragon in him.” She shivered. “Well, the next time he passes at me I’ll squash him really good.” “You want to take my car or yours?” Travel gave a humerous glance at the dusty seat of the old truck. “At least you emptied it.” she said. “And I see you had enough sense to come up from Colebrook instead of over Smith Hill—that goes like straight down.” “Yeah, that’s cause it’s part of the old North Road. They wanted a straight line to Albany, NY, so they went right up the nearest hill and down the other side. You coming in, or you want to stop at the house?” “This’ll do.” she said, hopping in. He actually had a running board under the door. “I called Dad and told him I’d be studying after school at a friend’s house, and he said ‘Let me guess. A guy?’ and I sort of giggled and he says, ‘All right, be home by midnight and mind the Lord.’ “ “So he thinks you’re on a date.” “Well, I don’t know that you could call a teleporting marathon session exactly romantic.” “Especially as I’m supposed to be going out with Carlee.” “Oh, that reminds me, how is that going?” “Well,” said Ronnie, “we did have that one date, and we’ve gone out once or twice, and we talk a couple times a week, but she’s booked till October. We’re hammering out another date, though.” “That’s good. I’m glad I brought her that day.” Ronnie glanced sideways at her. “I bet you engineered the whole thing.” “I…think you’re overestimating my generalship skills.” “Right. Well, try teleporting that rock over there.” He pointed to a big boulder sunk in the earth.” “You mind pulling over?” “Hurry up, it’s almost past.” Travel groaned. Blue light flickered in her eyes and the rock vanished. “Where did you send it?” Ronnie said dryly. “Umm…I didn’t really think about it…” Ronnie hit the brakes. The rock was resting in the road ahead of them. “That’s rather what I thought.” Travel teleported the rock back into the field with a red face. “Bad grades.” “Now that tree.” “It’s freakin’ planted!” He didn’t say anything, and Travel sighed and put out her power upon the tree. A hole appeared in the earth, and some distance away an uprooted tree suddenly appeared in the middle of the field. Then he had her teleport it back, while he drove on. She almost bungled that, but by keeping very clear images of where she wanted what to go, she managed it. Next he had her teleport another tree’s trunk but not the rest of it, and then individual limbs of other trees. She was surprised to find herself getting better and better, and actually enjoying it. “I’ve got to head over to the Green Lady Cemetary soon.” said Ronnie. “That story always troubled me. I want to see just what was the truth.” “I thought you went there.” “There are two. The one I meant was in Burlington.” They descended off the high crest of Smith Hill with its’ vast panorama of far hills seen across the sloping fields, and trees shut them in again. They rounded some charmingly sharp turns, passing old pleasant houses overhung by maples now showing sullen shadows of dull reds and crumpled yellows among the green. “Fall color stinks this year,” he said as the road descended in great curving loops. That damp spring put fungus on the leaves and now they’re all curling up.” He pulled over to the side abruptly. Ahead a steep descent ran down to the traffic light at Rt. 8. “Clear line of sight. All right, Travel, take my truck to the light.” “Umm…oh gosh…are you sure, I…” “Deep breaths. Relax. You can do it.” Travel was absolutely sure she couldn’t. Her stomach began tightening like a fist. What if she left part of the truck behind? What if she dropped Ronnie, or overshot her target? “You got us out of Brooke’s, didn’t you?” Travel shut her eyes. Blue flickered behind her lids. She opened them, startled. For an instant she had felt a sort of power just in reach, like a flood, a flood of blue light behind her mind. Closing them again she opened the hand in her mind, running it over the pickup, then thought about the traffic light. “Told you you could do it!” Ronnie was shouting. Her eyes flew open. The truck was now parked at the light. “Now again.” Again? Feeling weird all over, Travel sent her hand into that blue glow behind her mind, felt it in her, part of her, like a raging river of might, and with the hand in her mind she gripped the truck and everything in it. Certainty replaced dread. She could go anywhere. “Take us to the Green Lady Cemetary.” she said. They were no longer in the world. The blue fire bore up the pickup like a ship on the sea. Outside the windows shapes too fantastic to identify whirled past and around in no particular order or direction. They felt a sense of immeasurable ages cascading through and by them, as if at any moment they might find themselves ten thousand years old, or none. It was like when Travel had gone swimming in a big waterfall once, and the current smashed down on her from all sides, maddening, leaving no form direction, exhilarating and terrible. Reaching old maples caught them. They were in suspense, unable to think, only to watch. The truck—if they were still in the truck; its’ windows never registered on their eyes—was gliding with a ghostlike silence down a paved country road, surfaced with tiny stones pressed into tar. Sand hills sloped around them; short white pines, streaked with yellowing needles, and thick soft forests of their seedlings, mingled with white oak, low and crabbed, and tangled maple. Rusty yellow-brown and green filled the air. They drifted past a sad eerie swamp, a clay swamp with thick clumps of yellowing alder and frosty-green winterberry, rank swamp grass between. A sandy creek wound through it: Bunnel Brook, they knew the name by instinct. Ash leaned over the margin, and far off a ridge of tall white pines closed in the view. They came to a roadmeet. A lonely road headed uphill to the right, into more sad forests, and their road curved left. Yellowing locusts closed in, and the cloudy day gave the place an intolerable loneliness of atmosphere. It felt forsaken, a desolate place, an avenue for ghosts. The old buildings of a camp, painted white and littered with fallen leaves, shut up for the winter, lent nothing to improve it. It seemed all at once that the camp had been deserted not for months but for decades. A dirt road came in on the left, straight and broad and closed with cement blocks, and the truck drifted down this, and they could only watch. Two hundred yards past the waymeet, a stone wall appeared beside the road upon the right, and behind that wall a square open field. The truck moved no farther. Here was the burying place of those forgotten ones, the unlucky people, harassed by accident and by malice until only this remained, broken stubs of graves like sad teeth. Not a single stone among them remained whole. Woods enclosed it, far from houses, a remote place at the world’s end. Crumbly yellow and brown mingled with fading green colored the forest. Great maples ringed the field, bowed and stunted with age, reaching branches groping downward. Along the eastern and widest side, against the road, there were five. One maple stood in each corner. The south side and the west side each had one tree between the corners; the north side, only the two corner trees. Their grim fingers reached out over the field. An atmosphere of strangeness, of grim desolation and unutterable sorrow, hung over the deserted place; and something else as well, an air of hostility, of cold watchfulness. And that was when they saw the sign spraypainted on the tree. The middle tree of the southern side. Painted in black over red. A five-pointed star enclosed by a circle, one point uppermost, two for feet and two for hands. Even in their suspended condition the sight chilled them to the marrow. Snow filled the graveyard and the trees had no leaves, and bitter moonlight shone upon young maples in a bare land, fields running off behind the cemetery, though across the road the white pines remained. A house sat some way off to the right, nearer the waymeet, with a barn blocking off part of it, and a candle gleamed in one window. It was a small snug house, but even in the night there was a desperate sort of feel about it. Lit by the candle upon the wall was a portrait of a quiet young woman with a faint strange smile, and the frame and the picture seemed to flicker with an eerie green. The clouds closed over the moon and it began to snow, and from the house a single swinging eye emerged: a lantern, in the hand of a woman wrapped in shawl and scarf, hurrying across the road, confused by the blinding snow, going to her doom. As she passed from sight it seemed she was outlined in a glow of hazy green. The cemetary grew lighter. The twilight of a warm sticky autumn day lit in grey detail the reaching ancient trees. Facing the painted sigul stood a small knot of women. Two were young girls, one with short hair and one blonde, and Ronnie felt a dawning alarm when he recognized Julian and Delilah. They wore black cloaks, as did all the women, with dull red shawls, and in black upon the shawls were symbols he recognized, signs that made his blood cold with anger and an utter antipathy. All of them were hooded save for the girls. “Behold the pentacle.” said the woman at the head of the group, indicating the painted sign defiling the ancient tree. “It is the sign of our power and the mark of our belief. In the light and the lucence of this our holy sigul do we stand in communion upon this Equinox day, when the sun circles our Mother in equal procession, and day is long as night.” “We stand in communion.” the women answered as one. The leader drew back her hood, and Ronnie was not surprised to see underneath it the face of the Witch of Winchester. She held up a twisted wand, wrought of some black wood, as long as a cane, contorted into awful forms. In the cloudy gloom it seemed to glower with a faint red light. She pointed toward the pentacle. “We welcome here among us two who have drunk my brew and learned my powers; we welcome here two young saplings of olive before the Lord of the Earth; we welcome two fair daughters into the sacred light. Julian and Delilah, come forward, attired as you were in the day of your birth.” The two girls dropped their robes, a little self-consciously and yet with the impudence of beauty, giggling a little, and walked through the circle to kneel before the Witch of Winchester. Their bare bodies gleamed pale in the dusk. “What is the meaning of this our holy symbol, painted on this tree as a sign of our power?” Julian’s voice sounded sweet and girlish compared to the old witch’s low voice. “It is to us of Wicca what the cross is to Christians,” the scorn in that last word startled Ronnie, “for it shows a human spread-eagled in a circle of protection. The five points are for the Four Elements, and the fifth is for Spirit, the circle uniting them.” “For what does our symbol stand?” “It is an Earth symbol. The circle is a charm of protection. It stands for the Goddess, the feminine spirit or force, concentrated in the Moon, whose name is Diana; it stands for unity and wholeness.” “Good. Delilah, what is the deeper meaning of this our holy sigul?” Delilah’s voice was richer and sweeter. “It is a symbolical representation of forces employed for the manifestation of the inner self, of elements required for the incarnation of the divine.” The deepening twilight rendered the field a dim blue expanse and the trees a faint mist above the witches, whose red shawls were now only dull brown in the dusk. The pale shapes of the two girls were barely visible. Another pale shape could be made out, towards the middle, where the replica headstone of Elisabeth Palmiter had stood until stolen last year: a woman in short white skirt and white shirt, her hair pulled back. The Witch of Winchester raised her laurel wand. “It seems we have company.” she said. The circle of witches turned, each one pulling out something from under her shawl. The woman in white marched forwards. She was strung with prayer beads and rosaries, and Miraculous Medals hung around her neck, and she held a crucifix in one hand, and a bottle of holy water in the other. She was gabbling prayers so rapidly they sounded like a single impassioned stream of sound; but Ronnie recognized, among others, the familiar words of the Hail Mary. A sick despair washed over him. '' '' Alackaday! '' ''Have you come to play? '' ''I have no games for you, sir! '' Steadily the witches walked across the rolling field toward her, their pace unhurried, measured and firm: this was their ground. The woman in white started to retreat, her voice rising higher in her frantic importunings, crossing herself repeatedly: she had evidently expected these friends of darkness to flee like shadows at the approach of her weapons. “HailmaryfullofgracetheLordiswiththee, blessedartthouamongwomenand blessedisthefruitofthywombJesus…” she shouted. “Do you think that because you say ‘Lord, Lord’, everything will obey you?” the Witch of Winchester said in a voice of acid contempt. “Jesus, Jesus protect me, begone in the Name of Jesus, Jesus Mary and Joseph rebuke you and drive you out of this place in the Name of Jesus, Jesus…” “I see what Name you truly call, however much you think it otherwise.” said the Witch. “You came here on your own strength. You invoke the Names like incantations.” Holy water flew from the bottle of the woman in white, but the Witch did not even flinch. “You use the holy things like charms and amulets.” '' '' ''For the Door in Night '' ''Has let in a wight '' ''And I don’t know what to do, sir! '' '' '' “You are ours forever, O Witch in White!” The wands flamed in the hands of the witches. Evil light broke from them in blades like hellish lasers, transfixing the Witch in White in her energy points. Horror showed in her eyes. Sickness bowed Ronnie’s head. The fool! The pathetic fool! The spell tightened as the witches chanted. '' '' ''Why, my bad maid, '' ''You must be paid, '' ''For it came at your own calling! '' '' '' ''So take her, old wight, '' ''And get out of my sight '' ''For the Road it is a-coming! '' '' '' Bound and bundled in ropes of power, the Witch in White was thrown at the feet of the ancient tree. Alone in that gloomy lace the evil sign was distinct, as if the paint which made it was becoming luminous. “She shall be our energy focus, the nexus of our magic as we initiate our sisters Julian and Delilah. Let us walk the roads of power, let us tread the magic ways. Let us be one within our Mother, let us cause the dead to raise!” Words were chanted, words that blasted ears that heard them. Ronnie was glad he could not hear them, could not see what they were doing there within their magic circle. Their faint figures were like black spots in the greyness of the grass, lit by now and again a flicker of sickly light from the wands, mauve or nauseous blue or hideous green. The fell symbol shone, shedding no light. The spell-bound woman now and again gave a garbled cry. Lines of blue fire snaked out from the coven, forming signs of black magic on the grass. And the Green Lady appeared. A pale mist rose out of the ground, a single curving plume, visible of itself. Features of a woman grew distinct upon it, a woman with an eerie, quiet smile, as if at some secret and hideous joke. She was humming. A sad haunting melody, at the first notes of which the quiet chanting and murmered prayers of the witches ceased, echoing softly from the ancient trees. “The spirit has come.” said the Witch of Winchester. “Speak firmly and in a commanding voice, holding the sigul with your left hands, and compel it to answer whatsoever you would ask.” The naked figures of the two girls, pale shapes and no more, approached the faintly smiling ghost. But before they could say a word, the Green Lady spoke. ''“Why have you disturbed my rest?” '' The voice crashed and boomed in the trees like a clap of thunder, bouncing off far hills to die in sullen echoes. The girls were knocked on their backs. Ronnie could see one trying to lift her amulet, but in a flash the ghost was on her, holding her down, misty arms stretching out impossibly long. Again the huge female voice roared. '' “Why have you disturbed my rest?” '' The witches were frantically incanting now, all save the Witch of Winchester. She stood, motionless, before the gleaming symbol, and there was amusement in her voice when she spoke. “Green Lady, what is your desire?” The ghost turned toward her. Her immense voice, like the voice of a quiet and soft-spoken girl with the volume turned up to incredible decibels, answered, ''“I hunger. I hunger for life. I haunted my husband to death in his house, but I could not eat him, I could not live. I ate witches who called me up, but I could not live, I could only possess.” '' “If we give you life,” said the Witch of Winchester, “whom will you serve?” '' “I have no choice. I am dead. My fate is doomed. I cannot but serve your Master.” '' The Witch of Winchester raised the laurel wand. Sickly blue lightning lanced into the sky, and mingled with the thunder the high weird voice of the ancient woman sounded, shouting syllables so hard and barbed they cut at Ronnie’s ears: words in some language of hell. Like a stream of green water the ghost poured upon the Witch in White. Her eyes bulged, luminous green. She screamed, chewing as if to keep out the spirit by motions of her face, as he hands could not move. '' '' ''She uttered a scream '' ''As she fell in the stream '' ''Where the Barrow-wight was rising '' '' '' ''Like a shroud of night '' ''She was et by that wight '' ''And he licked his lips and smiled '' '' '' And the ghost poured like green water into the eyes of the Witch in White. Her eyes flashed green. She struggled no longer. She went limp, falling on the dewy grass. “So, Elisabeth, do you live?” the Witch of Winchester said sweetly. “You deceived me!” the Witch in White shouted, with the soft eeriness of the Green Lady blending and roaring with hers. “I am not living. I am haunting!” “You should know by now that no other life is possible for the Damned.” said the Witch of Winchester. “I could send you back to Hell. Be glad you are walking abroad, rather than there. Even life inside a pig is better than there.” “I will not forget.” said the voice of two women. “It is well.” said the Witch of Winchester. “Go drive home, Witch in White, until you are summoned.” As the pale figure tottered out of the cemetery, the coven gathered. “Let us complete our ritual.” said the Witch of Winchester. “Sister to sister…” A scream broke from Julian and Delilah. The old witch paused, frowning. “What is it?” “Male.” Julian whispered. “I feel male nearby.” “I see someone.” Delilah quavered, pointing at Ronnie and Travel. “Are they more ghosts?” “Interesting.” murmered the Witch of Winchester. “And I could not see them. You have earned your rank—I was beginning to fear you were only good for looking pretty.” She stood in front of the phantom truck, arms akimbo. “So the Road has sent some spies.” she said. “Did you really think you could elude a witch’s sight by walking on that threshold?” A creaking drew Ronnie’s eyes. One of the old maples along the roadward side of the cemetery was literally two, a hollow tree alive only on two sides, the wood between gone, leaving two halves standing independently, a gap showing nowhere less than an inch between them. And that gap was widening. “You will howl in that cloven tree until it harvests your souls, and your ghosts will do my bidding: such are the spells I put upon you.” she proclaimed. Ronnie and Travel felt claws of wood clamp upon them, crushing bone and flesh. “Not that tight, my little friend. They need to live for a while. No one can see them, no one can hear them. Let them suffer until their Warden notices, and let them die the instant he turns his eyes this way.” Pain. The universe was bound in it. Pain. Ronnie could not bear it, could not endure it, would go mad with it. He heard a voice that must have been his, moaning, sometimes crying, sometimes shouting out. He could barely breathe: the tree crushed on his ribs and his back, and pinioned his left leg. Slow, dry, aching pressure; something had to give but could not give for he was trapped, he could not move. The world was very tiny: his own five-foot-seven of body, and a dim mist of awareness around it. Above him now and then he heard Travel, sobbing, wailing and moaning, but only at intervals did the pressing stabbing ache allow him to identify this. Years ground slowly by, over him crushed between the horns of the world. There was no peace, nor rest, nor even thought. The haunted cemetery stood dark and gray in the cloudy night. It was warm and even sticky, but a cloying warmth, unhealthy and miserable. There was no sound, but a sense of unheard groans hung in the air, shrouded wails no man could see. Suddenly a figure stood near the tree. Small and pale-haired, he held a paintbrush in one hand. Two others were there, equally suddenly, as if they had appeared. Lara had bare feet and a book in one hand. Brooke was in pajamas: she’d turned in early. A brightness grew around them as Lara began to shine all over, until the cemetery was lit by a faint silver light. The grim branches of the twisted old trees made them shiver. “Why are we ''here?” said Brooke, swatting a mosquito. “I don’t know.” said Lara crossly. “Last time we all got whisked like this was when one of us was in peril. But where’s Ronnie and Travel?” “There.” said Forest. He was pointing to the cloven tree, whose sides gaped nearly a foot apart. Light reached through it unimpeded. The others looked bewildered. “They’re trapped between the halves.” “Forest,” said Brooke gently, running her hand through the opening, “there’s nothing there.” He met her eyes, and Brooke’s breath caught. A green glitter was stirring in their depths. “They’re caught on the doorhold of the Road, and crushed in that tree. I can see them.” “Are you sure?” said Brooke. He guided her hand to a wet bog in the base of the tree. “What does that look like?” “Blood.” whispered Brooke. “Oh my God, it’s blood.” With a flash, Lara went blue. “Good enough for me.” she said. “Let’s pry the tree apart.” “But” It is cursed; you cannot budge it. '' The girls weren’t listening in any case. Ice grew between the halves; and crumbled and broke the second any pressure built up. The same with Brooke’s solid water. The tree would not move. The earth quivered underneath them with the titanic forces of ice and water. But in vain. Lara let go, out of breath. “I don’t get it.” she puffed. “Nothing should be able to resist that kind of pressure. It’s like—something else was holding it.” “Magic.” said Forest. “I froze the Father of Dragons himself.” Lara snorted. “Why can’t I freeze a stupid tree?” “You froze him by his cold heart.” said Forest. “You’re the Star. The trees hate the Stars. There is a power in them to resist the Stars and confuse their power.” “Well, I’m going to give it another try.” “No.” said Forest. “Stay back. I will call to the tree.” “You’ll…? Don’t be ridiculous. This is a job for us.” said Lara dismissively. She always tended to think of him as much younger than he was. He grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her around. Green fire smouldered in his eyes. “''In the name of the Road you will listen to me!” '' Lara stepped slowly aside, a sudden wary respect in her frosted eyes. Forest strode up to the tree. Anger was in him, anger and authority. He reached out in his thought across the miles of forest, the dark secret trees in their countless nooks and places, until he could taste earth and drink moss; and he uttered its’ name as he laid both hands on both halves of the tree. '' Malvorn, he said. '' Malvorn'', he said louder. Green light broke from his hands. Under them the tree quivered, and he felt its’ slow thick thoughts, if such they could be called; its’ ancient hatred of those who tormented the ones that it guarded, the canker of magic that twisted its’ heart. '' Must hold, bite, crush, must not let go. '' “You must hearken to me, Malvorn. You must let go.” '' They told me to grab, bite, hold. Must not let go. '' They were not words, so much as thick swellings in Forest’s mind; the tree’s life swelled again, and he heard it once more, Grab bite, hold. “Malvorn, I compel you in the Name of the Road!” '' Crush them, hold them fast as bone. Must not let go. '' Forest lifted his hands and took a step back. Green fire danced in his eyes. With one hand he held up the paintbrush that he had been using when he was whisked from his room. “I will make you let go.” he said. Then he held out his hand and began to paint upon the air. Lara and Brooke stared with bulging eyes as light grew where the brush passed, the brush moving as fast as fire until a picture began to grow. It was of the tree, but its’ halves were forced open to snapping point by a mountainous rock of unbreakable crystal, painted harder than diamond and harder than adamant; not even magic could rend or crush that stone. Already something solid was shimmering in the air between the gaping halves. “Let them go.” he said. '' Must hold…bite…grip… '' There was a thunderous crash. The tree split apart. A giant rock had appeared out of nowhere between it, holding it almost ten feet apart. The picture vanished. Ronnie and Travel became visible, sprawled on top of each other. Hurriedly the others dragged them free and laid them out on the grass. “Oh my God. Oh my God. They’re dying.” moaned Brooke. The two were grievously injured. Blood streaked them, front and back. They barely breathed, and in the glow of Lara they looked ghastly pale. “Raspberry.” said Forest sharply. “What..? Why do you…?” Brooke began, and Lara was impatiently asking if anybody brought a cell phone as she bent over the two. “Numb.” she said imperatively. “Cold causes numbness. There. That at least will prevent the pain from sending them into shock.” “Raspberry!” Forest shouted. “I know what I’m doing! Find a pricker bush!” Yielding, they spread out through the forest, Lara shedding light like two moons. The woods across the street from the cemetery were low sand hills buried in young white pines, but in the wooded pastures behind the cemetery the ground cover was a mix of sparse blueberry and a sort of creeping raspberry. Brooke with her bare feet found them first (Lara was impervious to anything when Cold). Forest said it would do. Ignoring the thorns they gathered masses of it and hurried back. “Now I remember.” Brooke said excitedly. “Arheled said these can cure wounds!” “They’ll do better than that.” said Forest. I will extract their essence. Placing his hands on the heap of raspberry, he frowned fiercely. Green light leaped from his hands. The plants seemed to '' melt'', impurities sifting down like ash, the rest forming a large melon of glowing green between his hands. “Turn them over.” said Forest. He spread the green fog over them, and when they turned them, upon their backs as well. Lara frowned as a sudden thought occurred to her, and she and Brooke drew from water and from cold every healing quality and power they could think of. Hours passed. The night grew cooler and dew began to form. No balls or ghostly lanterns appeared, no pale mists rose from the ground: the Green Lady had left her cemetery. The glow grew fainter as the bodies of the injured absorbed it. Soon their chests rose and fell in slumber, and the agony left their faces. Pulling up their shirts Lara saw with amazement that the wounds had closed, and when she checked half an hour later they looked as though they’d been healing for a week. “Fruit, leaves, bark and roots speed up wound healing.” said Forest. “I call to the forest. That is my power.” “Pretty handy.” said Lara. So they kept vigil through the long cool night, dozing and waking constantly to swat bugs or listen to rustles in the leaves, which could be made by anything from mice to bears. The moon came out once and up to greet it rose the eerie yapping howls of coyotes, sounding wild and awful beyond description. Ronnie woke just before dawn. He seemed weak and spent, but whole. A red flicker burned in his eyes as he stared around, and suddenly his pickup appeared on the road, engine running once more. He had pulled it off the Road. Lara and Travel rode in the cab, while Brooke and Forest hung on in back. The old truck ponderously turned around in an zigzag K-turn, and Ronnie drove up the road. He glanced to the left, half expecting to see the little Palmiter house with the portrait of Elisabeth glowing green in the window, but all he saw was the cellar stonework: it had fallen in decades ago. Lara moved the cement blocks closing the road. They drove back up the winding climbing streets until they entered roads that they knew: the cemetery was a good fifteen miles south of Winsted. Ronnie dropped everyone off at their houses, and then, sleepy and exhausted, drove home. Day grew, slow and rainy, in the haunted graveyard. Rain dripped sadly from the long limbs of the reaching maples. One moment the cemetery was empty; the next, two figures stood in the damp grass, gazing in stunned silence at the cloven tree. As if fallen from the sky, a giant boulder had appeared between its’ halves, forcing them apart to the point of breaking. There was no sound. The taller figure broke the silence. It sounded like the voices of two women speaking at once. She was wearing a white raincoat with crosses stained onto the sleeves, and under its’ hood she could barely be seen. “Where are they, Witch of Winchester?” The heavier figure pulled her dull green raincoat close with an irritated gesture. “They have escaped, evidently.” “I thought that you were strong.” the other sneered. “Bandy me not, Witch in White.” said the shorter one testily. “I had them rigged to die if the Road or the Warden so much as brushed them. No, this is something else. This is the work of another.” “Who, then?” the double voice demanded. “Who is this mightier being that can overcome such witchcraft?” “He knows that he is strong, now.” murmered the Witch of Winchester. “This is the work of the Forest. So fell are they become, now, these new Children of the Road, that the Warden no longer needs to stir.” “The Children had no powers in the past. They could reveal and they could see, and they could feel; but they could not call. Why, then, are they suddenly growing so mighty?” “Because of what we are planning.” the Witch responded. “The Warden knows our Master is returning. But our Master will return before his so vaunted Road does; and we will be too strong for them to uproot by the time they are arisen in full might.” Back to Arheled